Epitáfio
by Electro Club
Summary: From a distance, beyond the glass of Tosh's window, Cardiff looked almost… normal. Intact. Like someone had taken a giant broom and swept fire and smoke under a rug during the night. Almost like it hadn't just been blown apart. Post Exit-Wounds.


**Title:** Epitáfio  
**Characters:** Ianto, Jack (Tosh).  
**Setting:** Post-Exit Wounds.  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine.

_Devia ter amado mais, ter chorado mais, ter visto o sol nascer_

From a distance, beyond the glass of Tosh's window, Cardiff looked almost… normal. Intact. Like someone had taken a giant broom and swept fire and smoke under a rug during the night. Almost like it hadn't just been blown apart. But not quite.

Everything looked a bit washed out, monochromatic in the first hours of the morning, as sunlight began to break its way through thick clouds in harsh shades of white. Ianto squinted at the stupidly bright, nearly tangible presence that stretched thousands of legs and arms into every direction, disquieting the spirit and hurting the eye. Didn't feel like it was going for punishment, though; there was something almost apologetic about it, as if the universe was using a defibrillator in a rather fruitless attempt to get the city back up on its feet.

There were no trees rustling, no people walking, no dogs barking and no cars driving by.  
Only a little gasping sound, like someone holding their breath, disturbed the absolute static outside. Cardiff was a little dead this morning.

This one would take a while to heal. Even to a place as used as Cardiff was to inexplicable and often disastrous occurrences, and the weekly threat of an imminent apocalypse. It wasn't easy, living under the influence of a temperamental Rift in time and space, but Cardiff pulled it off. Ianto asked himself how long it would take until it didn't. He had the impression they were all just a straw away from the breaking point. One tiny little push and…

_Devia ter arriscado mais, e até errado mais - ter feito o que eu queria fazer_

His fingers closed hard around the coffee mug in his hands. Their official mission was to collect laptops, archives, pieces of alien tech and notes kept on brilliant projects and impossible translations that would never see the light of day. Tosh's family would decide what to do with everything else. No need to save a shelf under Operatives, S, in Torchwood's filthy storage. It had been Gwen's gritted teeth and resolute determination, but Jack didn't even try to argue. There was nothing to argue about, anyway; Gwen was right. Tosh deserved more than paper boxes and dusty shelves.

Nothing, however, had caught his attention the way that mug did; it looked oddly misplaced – alien, amongst Tosh's other possessions, beautiful in its simplicity.

The flat itself looked liked one of her projects. Everything was harmonious and shiny and calculatedly perfect, so much so that Ianto felt like he was standing in a page of one of those décor magazines' rooms. There were traces of Tosh's good taste and sophistication there, of her sharp mind and natural elegance; but there still seemed to be something missing, some stronger marks of personality to make the flat feel more like someone's home rather than anybody's. To Ianto, that place seemed to be an ongoing plan, one where Tosh'd quit Torchwood in some near future, find a proper job where she wasn't likely to get killed, a partner, maybe a family, and time to make her own place look more like herself than her work desk did.

He wondered if he was any happier than Tosh had been for knowing better.

Ianto knew for a fact that life was something that only happened to other people. There was probably a clause on their contracts about that, yadda yadda, you agree to completely relinquish your personal and social life in the name of science and anonymous heroism. FOREVER. In capital letters, just to make sure.

A job that was physical and mental torture more often than not and a sort-of-almost-boyfriend who he couldn't even begin to figure out was the closest he'd ever get to that. From day one he understood his future wasn't likely to reserve him anything brighter than boxes in the back of a storage and a lousy lie on his obituary to divert from some great tragedy that no one would ever get to know about.

None of it added up to making him happy, not exactly; but at least he wasn't raising his bets on a game there was no way he could win.

_O acaso vai me proteger enquanto eu andar distraído?_

"How are you doing there?"

Ianto blinked out of his thoughts, and then blinked again to adjust his eyes, facing away from the window. Standing amongst dancing dots of color was Jack, three folders and a notebook in one hand and a laptop in the other, watching him from the hall.

Ianto raised the mug to him, then let his arm fall next to his body again. "I got nothing."

Jack nodded his head at the mug. "Are you keeping that?"

"I don't know," he said. "Don't really know what to do with it."

"You can take it, if you want," Jack left the things he was carrying on the table and moved purposefully to a cabinet in the corner of the living room. "Have you checked here?" he asked, opening the first drawer.

"Yeah," Ianto put the mug down on the corner table. He stretched his fingers a couple of times, rubbed his palms against the back of his trousers. "Nothing," he said, and slipped the hands into his pockets.

"You sure?" Jack opened the second one.

"I'm sure," he said, but it went ignored as Jack continued to search through the drawers. In other times, the attitude would've earned him an eye-roll. Now, though, Ianto merely suppressed a sigh, and watched the glaring impatience with which Jack shut the drawers closed.

He let him take his time, didn't say anything when Jack moved on to the next piece of furniture once he was done with the drawers, instead of taking Ianto's word that there was nothing to be collected there. Nothing alien, at least. Ianto knew that there was a large part of him, as well as Jack, that was not there just for the bureaucracy of their job. Even if they had no idea what it was that they were after.

A signal. A message. A coffee mug.

_Queria ter aceitado a vida como ela é; A cada um cabe a alegria e a tristeza que vier_

Ianto looked away, outside the window; white, white, white. He remembered standing at the rooftop of Canary Wharf and not being able to see an inch in front of his nose; all blank spaces and milky nothingness. He remembered being there because he didn't know what else to do. Because being consumed by the blinding light was still better than the other options.

"What now?" It was a loaded question, and he asked it almost by accident, the words rolling out of his mouth as if on their own volition. This should be easier, in theory, not as overwhelming; he had someone to ask that question to, this time, someone to make sure his compass didn't start pointing to a different north. But in practical terms, it didn't feel any different, no less excruciating than being a survivor in the middle of hundreds of dead bodies some which he knew, and some whose names he never heard, but whose faces were burned in his mind forever. It was ironic how surviving wasn't always a blessing in this business.

He was hoping the answer to that would settle down the riot going inside of him. Maybe if he'd had someone to tell him what to do back in Canary Wharf, things would've been different.

Jack looked up at him, exhaustion and that couple of extra thousand years he'd acquired from day to night showing quite clearly on the crease in his forehead and the unusual paleness of his skin. It still made Ianto's stomach twist, every time he thought about it.

"We still have a lot to do," Jack said.

And what happens after that?, he didn't ask, but stared expectantly at Jack.

There was a heartbeat's pause before Jack scrubbed his hands across his face. "You don't–" he started, paused for a sigh of resignation, and carried on. "There's a saying - more like common sense – that you can't defeat the human race. You can bring them down a thousand times, but it doesn't matter how hard the fall is, they'll always find a way around. I've seen some of the strongest races in the universe disappear in a blink of an eye, and yet…" His voice trailed off for a second. "It's our thing. We survive. We shake off the dust and we get back up."

He gave Ianto a pointed look, and strolled back to the table. "So you asked what now?" Bitterness bit into his voice. "Now we go on. We always go on. 'Cause there's nothing else we can do. Sometimes I'm not sure if that's a virtue or a curse." Jack mumbled the last part,; Ianto wasn't sure it was meant at him, anyway.

Ianto glanced back at the mug, its purple ceramic glistening amongst posh silvers and bright reds and wood-browns. He thought of Tosh, of all her unfinished plans, her IKEA flat and her untold secrets. And then, "My father wasn't a master tailor."

Jack froze for a split second. "What?"

"He worked at Debenhams," Ianto continued, talking a little too fast to disguise his rising anxiety. "I liked to make him more interesting than he really was. He wasn't someone I was exactly proud of, not that Debenhams had anything to do with it, just - I wished he was different, and then I started making him whoever I wanted him to be. Someone I could… tell people about. It became a habit, I suppose. He's been a civil servant, a footballer, pub owner, chef, pilot. Master tailor." He shrugged. "I don't know why I lied to you. It was automatic, I guess."

Jack regarded him with an undecipherable, puzzled look. "Ok," he said, slowly. "Why ar-"

"My mother," Ianto interrupted. "I wrote on my file that she lives in Newport. Did you ever check?" Jack's eyebrow raised in inquiry. "I thought maybe you had, after- "

"Your mother doesn't live in Newport?"

"No, she does. Just not at the address I gave you."

Jack's frown deepened further, and he leaned back against the table. "Huh."

"She lives in Providence Park. Been there for years now." Ianto had to flicker his eyes away as he said it, tasting the bitterness of the revelation on his tongue for the first time. He delivered it quickly, all in one go, and saw the expression on Jack's face change. "I only found that out myself about three years ago. My mother left us when I was a kid, and apparently not long after that she became… ill. Her new husband left her there, never came back, and she only got worse." He paused. "I never told this to anyone, not even Rhi - that's my sister, Rhiannon. I visit my mother twice a year, stay for half an hour, and then completely forget about it. I don't really know anything about her other than how she ended up in that place, and I'm not sure I want to. I just - I don't know why I even bother. I'm… sorry, I guess. For her. And I know I could've just told you she was dead. But I've seen enough deaths to kill people who are still alive, however barely. Even when they don't seem to remember ever having a son."

"Ianto-"

"I'm not done yet."

Jack raised his hand, palm turned to him to make him stop. "What are you doing?"

"Telling the truth."

"About your record?" Jack tipped his head in suspicion. "Why are you doing this now?"

A very long second went by as Ianto considered the million different answers he had for that question.

"Because I'm not going to make a video."

Jack stared at him like he had received a blow to the face. Ianto braced himself against the awkward sensation in his guts and the sudden need to scream. He had to do it now, because his life was only certain to last 'till he walked out of that flat. Maybe less. He could be dead in the next minute, and then the moment would be gone, and Jack would never know.

"I love y-"

"Stop."

Ianto frowned, swallowed it back down. "What?"

"Don't," Jack said, and took a hard step forward. For a second there, Ianto thought he was going to hit him. "I don't want to hear confessions, and I definitely don't need to listen to your last words. Don't start telling me things just because you think you're not going to make it." Jack pressed his lips into a thin line, jaw set and eyes gleaming. "Right now, I need to believe that you are going to live forever. Because I can't lose anyone else today," he spoke, pausing for emphasis. "So just– Don't."

Ianto only found his breath again when Jack turned away from him. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he immediately found the mug again.

"I'm sorry," he said, in a low tone.

Jack relaxed his shoulders, exhaled, but didn't say anything.

Ianto strolled across the living room, short, hesitant steps, and stopped behind Jack, inches away from contact. Jack leaned slightly back, and Ianto bent his head forward, forehead resting on Jack's shoulder. He breathed in that musky scent he couldn't quite place but that was so characteristically Jack. He didn't know whether Jack's clothes and skin were really impregnated with that scent of wet dirt, or if it was his mind playing tricks on him. "She wasn't supposed to be dead."

"No one ever is," Jack said.

"She had plans. She was brilliant." He paused. "There was too much still ahead of her. This isn't how it was supposed to be."

"Ianto-" Jack tried to turn, and Ianto drew back from him.

"I was going to the nuclear power station. It wasn't Owen who was supposed to be there. If I had been faster, we could –"

"Ianto." Jack cupped his face with both hands, forcing Ianto to look him in the eye. "Stop."

A long, biting silence followed, before Jack pulled him into an embrace. Hand on the back of his neck, lips touching his hair, the tip of his fingers pulling just a little too strong. Ianto had never felt so close to Jack as he did in that embrace – for all the wrong reasons, perhaps, all the reasons he never wished to have. But still. This was the story of Jack's life – he was always the last man standing, and would continue to be, for as long as he lived. Every single person he lost was a reminder of how eventually the whole world would turn into a graveyard. The whole universe, maybe. And while Ianto could find a flimsy comfort in the knowledge that there was at least one person he'd never lose, not to death at least, Jack had to hold onto him as though he could lock the two of them in that one second indeterminately by sheer force of will. The only certainty Ianto had in his life at that point was that he would die, sooner rather than later, probably; in Jack's, it was that he wouldn't. That only he wouldn't. How he'd managed to keep his mind relatively sane all this time was a mystery.

"I'm sorry," Ianto said again, and felt Jack planting a kiss on the side of his head, and then pulling away.

"We have to go," Jack said, taking one last look around, his eyes scanning the entire room, and eventually stopping on the mug in his hand. "Are you keeping that?"

"Yeah," he decided. "I'll take it."

He spared only another glance at the empty flat, all blurry edges under the light that poured into the living room through the windows.

Ianto picked up the mug, and didn't look back.

_Devia ter complicado menos, trabalhado menos - ter visto o sol se pôr_

_End._

**Notes:** The title, as well as the verses in Portuguese, are from a song called Epitáfio (Epitaph), by a band named Titãs. It was written for a former band member who died in a terrible accident. Here are rough translations:

_I should have loved more; should have cried more; should have seen the sun rise_

_I should have risked more, and even committed more mistakes; should have done what I wanted to do_

_Will chance protect me while I walk mindlessly?_

_I wish I had accepted life as it is; we're all bound to the happiness and misery that comes our way_

_I should have complicated less, should have worked less; should have seen the sunset_


End file.
